PC PACKET 06162026 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

MEMORANDUM To:Saint Anthony Village Planning Commission From:Stephen Grittman, City Planner Date:June 16, 2026 Request: Public Hearing – Review of Proposed Sustainable Building Ordinance BACKGROUND As part of the City’s Environmental Responsibility goal, the City has been working to implement the Climate Action Plan. In the Climate Plan, an identified action item under the Energy focus area is to “Consider adopting a sustainable building policy for all new and remodeled construction projects”. Last year, the City began exploring whether a sustainable building policy or ordinance is feasible for the City. In the spring of 2025, the Parks and Environmental Commission (PEC) met to consider high level parameters of a sustainable building policy. At the PEC work session, staff shared best practices based on other agencies and requested feedback pertaining to the type of approach, priority impacts to consider for the Saint Anthony ordinance, as well as recommendation on type of applicable projects. The City Council then reviewed the PEC’s recommendations at a work session in the fall of 2025. Council, PEC and staff agreed that a mandatory approach via ordinance was the most effective approach, compared to a voluntary approach or approaches that relied on City preference or scoring systems. A mandatory approach establishes a standard best practice with straight forward guidance for developers. The Council and staff reached consensus that the ordinance should be applicable to new and redevelopment projects impacting multi-family housing, commercial and industrial zones. Many agencies’ sustainable building ordinances or policies include criteria specific to the community to capture the City’s priorities or context sensitives. These criteria, referred to as Sustainable Standards in the draft ordinance, creates an expectation that all projects subject to the requirements of the ordinance, unless specifically exempted, are working towards consistent environmental goals. In the spring of 2026, the PEC met to review the staff research, and discuss the merits of a draft ordinance (updated and attached to this memo), and reflecting the comments of the PEC. With the PEC comments, the City Council considered the material in worksession, and directed the ordinance to the Planning Commission for a public hearing and Commission recommendation. STAFF RESEARCH Staff reviewed a number of local agencies’ sustainable building efforts. The Center for Energy and Environment and Hennepin County developed a sustainable building policy guide in 2021, which the City used as a key framework to develop their approach and ordinance. Sustainable Building Basics A Sustainable Building structure often includes compliance requirements with an appropriate third-party rating system (i.e. LEED, B3, etc) to support standardization for sustainable building across the region.